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When Kevin Peak opened CaJa Popcorn in 2012, he knew social media
would be an important component of his marketing plan. In
addition to creating a website and establishing a presence on
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, he looked to online review
sites such as Yelp and Urbanspoon to gather reviews and
increase visibility for his gourmet popcorn company, which
operates an Atlanta retail outlet and sells its products
online.

"Enough people use those sites that I knew it was important for
me to get my name on them to tell my story," Peak says. "They
give you the ability to include information like your hours and
some photos, both of which are key to getting customers to stop
in."

But Peak soon realized that review sites posed some unexpected
challenges. "These sites are great to get my name out there, but
managing the actual review piece of it can be tricky," he says.
"A lot of it feels out of your control, and for a business owner,
that creates a real struggle."

"A lot of it feels out of your control, and for a business
owner, that creates a real struggle."
-- Kevin Peak of CaJa Popcorn

Most consumers today won't even leave the house without first
looking up a business's online review. As the number of people
conducting research on sites such as Yelp, Urbanspoon and
TripAdvisor increases--Yelp alone boasts more than 53 million
reviews and an average of 120 million unique visitors monthly--so
does the number of businesses struggling to manage their
listings. While some startups have trouble even getting listed,
others suffer from negative reviews or erroneous information
provided by consumers. Indeed, many are finding online review
sites to be a double-edged sword: They can be a great way for
businesses to get discovered online, but they can bring unwelcome
and inaccurate criticism and can cost time and money to manage.

Here are six steps you can take to get the most out of
user-generated review sites.

Whether you're initiating a new profile or "claiming" one that's
already on the web, it's important to fill out your listing as
fully and accurately as possible, explains Jennifer Grappone, Los
Angeles-based partner at Gravity Search Marketing and co-author
of Five Stars: Putting Online Reviews to Work for Your
Business. "If you provide as many details as you can, you're
probably going to be a step ahead of at least some of your
competitors."

Grappone suggests choosing your descriptive categories carefully
after reviewing which ones your competitors are using, and
including details beyond the requisite name, phone number and
address. "For example, if you don't enter your hours of
operation, you'll never show up in a search if the user clicks
the 'open now' search button," she explains.

One detail that can be problematic is the address for home-based
or service-related companies that don't have a physical presence
(or don't want to make it public). Grappone suggests providing a
service area as a workaround. "On many sites, you can enter your
business information, but if you don't want the public to see
your address, you can instead select a service area," she says.
"You can see various companies on Google+ Local and Yelp that
show a ZIP code only and not a full address."

To optimize your SEO, it is important to have one standard and
accurate listing on every site that mentions your company; if
your listing varies among sites, it may be pushed down in search
results.

Michael Dash, president of New York-based CarPartKings.com,
relies heavily on review sites to validate his company and let
users know what to expect from his service.

But after purchasing a yearly program with an industry-specific
ratings site, he found that as traffic to his e-commerce business
increased, so did the charges to keep the reviews coming--rising
from $50 per month to $1,000. When he refused to accept the rate
increase, he was shown the original agreement specifying that if
he stopped paying the fees, the reviews he had received using the
service would be removed from the site.

Within a day of refusing to pay the increased rate, all of his
positive reviews disappeared, while the negative ones remained.
"We learned our lesson the hard way," Dash says.

Today, he uses services that charge on a month-to-month basis and
agree to keep reviews on the site indefinitely. "I can cancel at
any time, and all reviews will be kept up, and they can't
raise our rate more than a certain percentage every six
months," he says. "Those are important things to look out for
when signing up."

Establishing a listing is not enough; you need to solidify your
presence by gathering as many reviews as possible. While the
algorithms used to determine your company's placement on these
sites is mysterious at best, having a greater number of reviews
can improve your landing results over competitors on the results
page of a local search, according to Kristen Schiele, an
assistant professor of marketing at Woodbury University in
Burbank, Calif. "Not only does getting as many reviews as
possible help tell your story, it also brings you up higher on
the pages when people search for your type of business," she
says.

Ron Holt, CEO of Birmingham, Ala.-based Two Maids & A Mop,
launched his cleaning service in 2003 but revamped his marketing
efforts in 2009 to focus solely on leveraging review sites.
"We've invested a lot of time and research to make it as easy as
possible for our customers to talk about our service without
actively soliciting for that in an over-the-top way," he says.

Holt directs customers to a private website and gives them
step-by-step instructions on how to leave reviews. He even
provides coupon codes to sites that require a fee to join. While
that may seem like a lot to ask of customers, Holt's goal of a 1
percent online review rate is enough to attract the new customers
he needs to continue to grow.

"If we can get three to six reviews out of the 300 customers we
have each day, then those reviews on a daily basis will provide
exponential growth for us," he says, noting that his company's
annual revenue has grown from $500,000 to $5 million since
dedicating 100 percent of its marketing budget to gathering
online reviews.

One of the biggest frustrations with review sites is that they
can (and do) filter legitimate reviews so that they may be hard
to find--or even removed--based on individual site parameters.
"It's a real challenge, because they totally control their
algorithms to say what gets shelved and what doesn't," says Peak
of CaJa Popcorn.

Yelp's policy states that it doesn't want businesses to ask for a
review, and that it will filter reviews it believes have been
solicited. Yelp and other sites also commonly filter comments
from people who have written only a single review; those that are
too glowing, which may appear fake; and even those that are too
negative, because they may have been written by a competitor.

Rather than worry too much about the game, Peak makes a concerted
effort to ask customers who actively use social media to share
feedback about his company. "We say, 'If you like us, and you use
social media, we'd love for you to help us out,'" he says, adding
that the CaJa store has experienced a 62 percent increase in
monthly customer visits over the past year. "If you worry about
the filters, it's almost as if you have to say, 'Do you Yelp a
lot? Because if you don't, your review doesn't even matter.'"

For 'treps who feel strongly about getting reviews on Yelp,
Grappone offers one easy hack: "Ask everybody who comes through
your door for a check-in, and if those people haven't already
reviewed you, they will get a prompt from Yelp after they've
checked in requesting a review of your location," she says.
"That's a way to encourage reviews without breaking their rules."

Poor reviews can hurt, but it's important to respond in a calm
and professional manner. "You may be talking to the individual
reviewer, but your audience is really whoever else also comes
across that page," Grappone says. "Even if you don't agree with
it, it's best to write a thoughtful response that directly
addresses the situation and describes a reason why this is still
a desirable business."

Holt and other officials of Two Maids & A Mop meet bimonthly
to determine if any reviews need follow-up. He also provides a
standard response template to ensure that his 15 affiliate- and
franchisee-owned location managers respond to reviews in an
acceptable manner that is consistent with his brand's values.

Factually incorrect reviews are another problem, but the
complaint system to have them removed is difficult and often
unsuccessful. So it may be preferable to simply continue to
collect reviews so that the questionable ones are outweighed.

"The more reviews you have, the more likely that your customers'
voice will come through, and if you're doing a good job, that
will show," Grappone says. "Any negative stuff will be diluted."

As long as your business is operating smoothly, consider
enlisting the help of services that might make these sites work
better for you. For example, Bazaarvoice Express automatically
requests reviews from customers that can be posted on your site,
and Moz has a tool that will standardize local listings on major
aggregators for about $50 per year.

"Automating the process of requesting reviews and making sure
your listings are correct is helpful, because the more reviews
you accumulate, the more credibility you have," Grappone says.

And while plenty of business owners believe they shouldn't have
to pay to control their own information, research suggests that
advertising on review sites in the form of so-called "enhanced
listings" might be worth the expense.

A Boston Consulting Group survey of nearly 4,800 small businesses
found that companies that had a standard Yelp profile but did not
pay to advertise on the site reported incremental annual revenue
of $8,000 from Yelp. Businesses that paid for Yelp ad campaigns,
on the other hand, saw an average annual revenue increase of more
than $23,000.

Dash believes paid programs are worth the investment. He says
CarPartKings products that are reviewed have conversion rates
about 30 percent greater than those that aren't. "I think it's
important that we spend the money to make sure we're getting our
reviews out there and that the reviews are from a trusted
source," he adds. "The farther and wider you spread your net, the
better."